


The Death of Queen Jeyne

by mirandu



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-12 00:07:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirandu/pseuds/mirandu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And maybe it was I who betrayed his majesty.  // Post RW.  Back home, Jeyne Westerling deals with her grief.  (Despite the title, this is not actually a death fic.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Death of Queen Jeyne

**Author's Note:**

> I was planning to work more on my Rhaegar/Lyanna fic, and then this came out instead. I've never felt all that attached to Jeyne Westerling, so I think my annoyance with the way Game of Thrones is dealing with Robb's marriage spawned this. (That and remembering the song "The Death of Queen Jane.")

_Adieu, adieu, my heart is lost_  
 _Adieu, my joy and my solace_  
 _With double sorrow, complain I must_  
 _Until I die, alas, alas_  
 _Until I die, alas, alas_  
\-- The Death of Queen Jane (Celtic Woman's version, apparently)

 

Up in her room in the Crag, Jeyne is taking out stitches.

There are garments strewn at her feet. The remainders of garments, at least: bits of cloth that had been sewn together, bound into shape, forming a whole. Once they had been gowns of emerald and indigo and gold, gowns of weirwood white. They had been gowns for walking and for riding and for dancing, gowns for sliding up along limbs, gowns for bedding, gowns for being removed. But that was in a different world, a separate lifetime. Now they are only fabric. She takes out another stitch, and another dress puddles onto the floor, rich and red and warm as blood.

Outside, it is snowing.

“Queen Jeyne,” she hears. There is a hand hovering near her arm, not quite touching. “Your Grace. You mustn’t.”

The little serving girl who came with them when they left Riverrun. The only one who still dares give her crime name.

“I am not a queen,” Jeyne says. She takes another gown into her lap.

Footsteps in the hall, and then the door opens and her mother steps in. There is a certain way she has of entering a room; she begins to fill it immediately, pushing everything else out. The world recedes. Voice and thought and air contract. Even the fire bends before her, hissing in the logs and crouching low.

“What are you doing?” she demands. Her tone is whip-crack sharp.

“I am undoing,” Jeyne says, pulling at a stitch.

Her mother’s hand flashes out. Behind them, the serving girl chokes off a gasp. Jeyne wonders faintly if they believe she still feels pain. The slap makes her head rock back; the impact has left something angry and red to bloom across her cheek. But this is mere information; it does not otherwise connect. She lifts her thumb to her mouth, touching the trickle of blood that wells there. She wipes it slowly onto her skirt, stares at it a moment. Dark as the moon’s blood that dyes her sheets each month.

In her mind, Jeyne moves backward into another room, another morning. Behind her: blankets rumpled upon the king’s bed. The smell of sweat lingers on her skin. Her own sweat and his. Her mother sits before her, smiling. “Drink your tea,” Jeyne hears her mother urge. “Drink your tea.”

Because Jeyne is undoing, instead she lifts the cup. She raises it to her mouth a moment, testing the feel of it against the delicate skin of her lips. But she doesn’t swallow, she does not so much as sip. Her fingers tighten around it. Her arm is strong as she hurls the cup across the room. It strikes the wall and shatters, flying into splinters and shards. The liquid leaves a smear on the stone, dripping downward. Jeyne’s heart slams against her ribs. She smiles at her mother, and the smile is sweet.

But Jeyne can never undo things for long. Soon the world unwinds itself, and then time is rushing forward. Helpless, she watches as the fragments collect in the air, rearrange, and become a cup once more. The tea goes unspilled, the stone unstained. The cup is in her hands again, and she is bringing it to her lips.

“Drink your tea,” she hears.

Jeyne drinks deep.

Back in her room in the Crag, her mother has taken her hands. Funny how they seem like claws curled there, cold and bony.

“You will cease this at once.”

“Yes,” Jeyne says, and lets the garment fall from her lap.

She glances down at her feet, wondering if the gowns will restitch themselves as well, bend into bodice and sleeve and skirt, float before her. But though she waits, they remain in a heap, torn and ruined. She enjoys the violence of that. She lifts one stretch of cloth, holding it out before her. She had danced with him in this, her king—blue to match his eyes—and the dress had certainly floated then. Now she sets her fingers along its edge, grips it tight. She listens to it tear for just a moment before her mother clutches her arm and jerks her from the chair.

“Come with me,” her mother says.

“Yes,” Jeyne says, and follows her out of the room. The serving girl begins to gather up the mess. Beyond, the world is waiting, and Jeyne is not a queen, but a Westerling again.

During daylight, there is always someone at her side, always some task to occupy her. There are smiles to be given and duties to perform. There are words to speak, and if she is prompted, she will even speak them. Everywhere she goes, she feels eyes upon her. This does not bother her, though sometimes she thinks it should; it simply is. The weight of a gaze is negligible and can be lifted with a shrug. The whispers she sometimes hears are arrows that glance off. There is no place left to wound her. No skin to pierce. During daylight, she moves from room to room, from hour to hour. The watery sun slides down the sky. The snow piles higher. 

But at night, she is alone. She has switched bedchambers since she returned home. She cannot bear to sleep where he used to. She cannot bear to sleep, at all.

At night, she waits in her bed just long enough to let the world settle into slumber. Then she rises and slips barefoot down the hall, wraith-quiet as she steps across the cool stone. She doesn’t need a candle to light her way. She knows it by feel, by memory. Every night, she comes here.

Here is the door. Here is the room. Here is the bed where, in the fevered haste of his grief, her body first welcomed his.

It hurt, that first time, and she misses that ache. She wishes that she could still feel pain, so she could feel again how sweet it had hurt. How she had brought his head to her breast. How his face, damp with tears, had been so hot against her skin. How soft his hair had been.

Every night she comes here, takes this moment in her hands, pulls it apart stitch by stitch.

In fumbling darkness, she slides backward off his body. Their limbs untangle. She shifts her dress into place, lowers her eyes so they will not meet his. She wills herself away from the bed, back down the empty hall, into her own room, where the door is shut and locked.

“Stay,” she whispers. And: “Please.”

But Jeyne can never undo things for long, and the girl who will become Queen does not heed her.

Now the girl is rising once again. Now she is padding along the stone. Now she is before the door, pausing only a moment with her hand above the latch.

“Turn around,” Jeyne tells the girl. “Keep walking,” she begs.

The girl doesn’t move. Her face is flushed with fear and excitement. She is very young. 

Jeyne thinks how she would like to wrap her hands around the girl’s throat and squeeze.

But it is always the same. The moment passes, and the girl’s hand closes on the latch. Jeyne shuts her eyes as she hears the door open. She mouths the words she knows the girl will speak.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Your Grace. May I come in?”

Because, in the end, she can undo nothing, and so instead she waits.

Every night, she waits here in the doorway, caught half a step between two worlds, connected to neither. In this space, she is not Westerling or Stark, she is neither queen nor widow; she is simply Jeyne. This is where she wakes. This is where she lives.

And she will wait here until morning, straining for the sound of a voice she will never hear again.


End file.
